On This Day in HISTORY

Abu Hanifa Mosque in Baghdad

917 – Liu Yan declares himself emperor, establishing the Southern Han state in southern China, at his capital of Panyu

1500 – Maria of Jever born, the last ruler of the Lordship of Jever from the Wiemken family after her brother suddenly died at age 18; Count Edzard I of East Frisia was negotiating a marriage contract for her to marry one of his sons, but his sons jumped the gun and occupied Jever Castle, mistreating the prospective bride. East Frisian Landdrost Boing of Oldersum came to her rescue, and drove the invaders out of Jeverland. She might have married Boing, but he was killed during a siege of Wittmund. Maria never married, and had to learn to play politics. She made a deal with Emperor Charles V to take possession of Jeverland and then return it to her as a fief. This ended the imperial immediacy of Jeverland, which had been independent since 1417, but protected Jeverland from its encroaching neighbors. She gave Jever City charter rights, and enlarged her territory by having new polders and locks built. Commerce flourished. When she died, her death was kept secret to prevent those nasty Counts of East Frisia from trying to grab power before the arrival of her rightful heir, Count John VII of Oldenberg, the son of her cousin

1538 or 1545 ? – Chachapoyas * Peruvian city, Spanish name originally San Juan de la Frontera del Los Chachapoyas, site of the fortress of Kuelap built by the pre-Incan Chachapoya people, ‘Warriors of the Clouds’

1568 – Tommaso Campanella born, Italian Dominican friar, philosopher, writer, theologian and astrologer; son of a poor cobbler, he was considered a child prodigy, and was taken into the Dominican Order before the age of 14; Philosophia sensibus demonstrata(Philosophy demonstrated by the senses) and wrote a defense of Galileo Galillei during Galileo’s first trial

1661 – Nicolas Fouquet, Superintendent of Finances under Louis XIV, arrested by D’Artagnan, lieutenant of the king’s musketeers for records discrepancies and suspicion of lining his own pockets from the state treasury

1670 – Jury Rights Day * – William Penn of London, arrested for publicly preaching Quakerism in violation of England’s Conventicles Act, pleads Not Guilty. The court repeatedly instructs jurors to find Penn guilty but they refuse. Jurors are jailed, withholding from them food, water, tobacco and fire. Jurors appeal their imprisonment and fines. A higher court ruling (Bushell’s case) confirms jurors cannot be punished for their verdict, even if a law has technically been broken, establishing jury rights in common law

1698 – Russia’s Peter the Great, trying to Westernize the Russians, imposes a tax on beards for all men except clergy and the peasantry

1735 – Johann Christian Bach born, German composer

1774 – First Continental Congress assembles in Philadelphia PA

1781 – American Revolution Battle of the Chesapeake: The British Navy, carrying much-needed supplies for the British Redcoats, is repelled by the French Navy, contributing to the British surrender at Yorktown

1781 – Anton Diabelli born, Austrian composer and music publisher

1791 – Giacomo Meyerbeer born, German-Jewish opera composer

1793 – French Revolution’s National Convention institutes the Reign of Terror, executing almost 17,000 people by guillotine, and 25,000 more by summary execution

1798 – French revolutionary government passes Jourdan law, universal conscription of all single and childless men between ages 20 and 25, with exemptions for clergy, public office holders, and workers essential to the war effort. However, wealthy men could pay for a “replacement” to serve in their stead

1836 – Sam Houston is elected president of the Republic of Texas

1862 – Pioneering meteorologist James Glaisher, with Henry Coxwell, breaks the world altitude record while collecting weather data in their balloon

1882 – The first Labor Day parade in the U.S. takes place in New York City

1894 – U.S. Congress makes first Monday in September national Labor Day * to honor America’s workers

1897 – A. C. Nielsen born, American market research engineer

1899 – Helen Creighton born, Canadian author and folklorist; collector of over 4,000 traditional songs and stories, publishing many books on Nova Scotia folk songs and lore; Member of the Order of Canada (1976)

1902 – Jean Dalrymple born, American theatre producer, manager, playwright and publicist; she and future Hollywood screenwriter Dan Jarrett began their careers together on the vaudeville circuit, and co-wrote sketches. For one of them, “The Woman Pays,” they hired a handsome young Englishman with no acting experience who was working at Coney Island as a stilt-walker, thus giving Archibald Leach his first acting job (he became much better known later as Cary Grant.) When vaudeville started dying out, she switched to writing shorts for talking pictures, and also wrote her first play, Salt Water. Dalrymple was instrumental in the founding of the New York City Center, served on its board, and produced many plays there, including revivals of Our Town, Porgy and Bess, Othello (starring Paul Robeson and Jose Ferrer), A Streetcar Named Desire (starring Uta Hagen and Anthony Quinn), Pal Joey (with Bob Fosse and Viveca Lindfors), and King Lear (with Orson Welles)

1905 – The Russo-Japanese War ends with the signing of the Treaty of Portsmouth

1905 – Arthur Koestler born in Hungary, English novelist and journalist

1908 – Cecilia Seghizzi born, Italian composer, noted for her choral works, and as a violinist

1909 – Dr. Yusuf Mohamed Dadoo born, tireless South African fighter for national and social liberation, who did much to forge closer links between Indian, African and Colored groups fighting to end racial discrimination. He died in September 1983, while exiled in London

1912 – John Cage born, experimental American composer

1914 – WWI: First Battle of the Marne begins

1914 – Nicanor Parra born, Chilean poet, mathematician, and physicist; studied physics at Brown University in U.S. and cosmology at Oxford; taught theoretical physics in Santiago; published Poemas y Antipoemas in 1954, which became one of the most influential Spanish-language poetry collections in the 20th century

1915 – Opening Day of the Zimmerwald Conference, an international pro-peace socialist meeting in Switzerland

1921 – Actress Virginia Rappe dies at a party in San Francisco hosted by silent film comic “Fatty” Arbuckle, and he is charged with rape and manslaughter. After two hung juries, he is acquitted in a third trial, but his films are banned and his career ruined

1924 – After young military officers in Chile protest postponement of promised social reforms with a ruido de sables (saber rattling) two days earlier, Right-Wing Military leaders led by General Luis Altamirano seize power

1938 – Doreen Massey born, Baroness Massey of Darwen; Labour Member of the House of Lords since 1999, and secretary of the All Party Parliamentary Humanist Group; Director of the Family Planning Association (1989-1994)

1939 – U.S. proclaims its neutrality in WWII

1939 – Claudette Colvin born, American nurse and civil rights activist; as a teenager, she refused to give up her seat on the bus to a white person in Montgomery, Alabama, nine months before Rosa Parks did

1940 – Valerie Howarth born, Baroness Howarth of Breckland since 2001, British politician and crossbencher member of the House of Lords and secretary of the All Parliamentary Children’s Group; Chair of Cafcass (Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service) since 2008; she worked for several years as a Chief Officer in social services departments

1941 – WWII: Estonia is occupied by Nazi Germany

1943 – Dulce Quintans-Saguisag born, Filipina politician; Secretary of Social Welfare and Development (2000-2001); secretary-general of the Gymnastics Association of the Philippines; campaigned for Corazon Aquino during her 1985-1986 presidential campaign; she was a breast cancer survivor who made her story public in 1997; killed in an automobile accident in 2007

1945 – Eva Bergman born, Swedish film, TV and stage director; noted for work at Sweden’s national theatre, the Royal Dramatic Theatre (called Dramaten for short)

1946 – Kyongae Chang born, South Korean astrophysicist; known for work on gravitational lensing, including the Chang-Refsdal lens

1950 – Cathy Guisewite born, American cartoonist, creator of the long-running comic strip Cathy, syndicated at the height of its popularity in the mid-1990s to almost 1400 newspapers. The final strip appeared on Sunday, October 3, 2010, after Guise announced its retirement

1956 – Les Waas founds the Procrastinators’ Club of America, and September 5 is chosen as ‘Be Late for Something Day’ *

1957 – Jack Kerouac’s On the Road is published

1958 – Doctor Zhivago by Russian author Boris Pasternak is published in the U.S.

1960 – Poet Léopold Sédar Senghor becomes the first elected President of Senegal

1962 – Tracy Edwards born, British sailor and author; skipper in 1989 of the first all-female crew in the Whitbread Round the World Yacht Race aboard the Maiden, which finished second in its class; first woman to be honoured with the Yachtsman of the Year Trophy; co-author of Maiden, and author of Living Every Second

Maiden Crew – (Edwards 2nd from left in 2016 picture/below her 1989 self in earlier picture)

1969 – U.S. Army Lieutenant William Calley is charged with six specifications of premeditated murder for the death of 109 Vietnamese civilians in My Lai

1972 – Munich massacre: Palestinian terrorist group “Black September” takes 11 Israeli athletes hostage at the Munich Olympics. Two die in the attack, and the other 9 are killed the next day

1973 – Rose McGowan born in Italy, American activist against sexual assault and harassment and former actress; author of Brave, a memoir, and starred in the 4-part documentary Citizen Rose

1997 – Beni Messous massacre in Algeria, one of over a dozen massacres during the year’s brutal civil conflict after the military’s cancellation of the 1992 elections, which were expected to be won by the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS). Beni Messous is an outlying suburb of Algiers, the nation’s capital. At 10 pm, 50 howling men came out of the night with knives and machetes, breaking into houses and slaughtering everyone inside. Screaming victims banged pots and pans to warn neighbors. Security forces, though stationed nearby, took three hours to arrive, and at least 87 people were killed. No official death toll was released, and figures as high as 150 and as low as 53 were claimed by opposing political parties. At least another 45 people were killed the following night. The Algerian government told the UN Commission on Human Rights that a judicial inquiry had been opened, and a raid was carried out on July 7, 1998, on the hideout of the eight culprits. But a general told the UN investigative team on July 27, 1998, that only eight of the culprits remained at large, one terrorist was in prison, and their leader had been shot and killed on July 17. Amnesty International questioned the state’s response, noting that Beni Messous had the largest barracks and military security centre in the capital, and an army barracks and the gendarmerie were so close to the site of the massacre that it was actually visible from their windows. Victims who managed to phone the security forces were told it was a gendarmerie matter, but no one answered at the gendarmerie

2006 – Russian President Vladimir Putin arrives in Cape Town, leading a delegation of government officials and Russian business leaders on a two-day official visit for talks about strengthening political and economic ties between Russia and South Africa. Many members of the African National Congress received military training and financial support during the ANC’s fight to end apartheid

Putin with South African President Thabo Mbeki

2009 – Denmark inaugurates National Flag Flying Day * to honor Danes deployed in international operations since 1948

2012 – International Day of Charity * – The U.N. chooses the date of Mother Teresa’s death as the day to inspire people to give of their time and money to help others

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About wordcloud9

Nona Blyth Cloud has lived and worked in the Los Angeles area for the past 45 years, spending much of that time commuting on the 405 Freeway. After Hollywood failed to appreciate her genius for acting and directing, she began a second career managing non-profits, from which she has retired.
Nona has now resumed writing whatever comes into her head, instead of reports and pleas for funding. She lives in a small house overrun by books with her wonderful husband and a bewildered Border Collie.